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Beluga whale Aurora catches a fish thrown by a trainer while being fed at the Vancouver Aquarium in Vancouver, B.C., on Wednesday June 25, 2014.

Photograph by: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck ORG
, THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck ORG

The Vancouver Aquarium will keep its captive whales and dolphins, but will no longer be allowed to breed them after a unanimous park board vote Thursday night.

The board’s recommendations also called for the creation of an oversight committee of animal welfare experts to ensure the wellbeing of the aquarium’s cetaceans, to explore alternatives to cetacean exhibition and to continue examining animal-care standards within the aquarium.

“I think this is the beginning of a broader conversation on this issue and on whales in captivity in Stanley Park,” said commissioner Sarah Blyth.

Vancouver Aquarium CEO John Nightingale said he was disappointed by Thursday’s result, but said aquarium staff would sit down over the next week to take a closer look at how the park board’s recommendations would affect research and rescue operations.

“In some ways, I’m astonished that none of them seem to grasp the connection between what the aquarium does and what we’re trying to do,” Nightingale said following the meeting.

“With so many issues affecting species like belugas and ecosystems like the arctic, it seems like the time for more science and more research, not less.”

All five park commissioners in attendance — Blyth, Trevor Loke, Constance Barnes, Niki Sharma and parks board chairman Aaron Jasper — agreed that the recommendations are only a first step toward an ongoing discussion. NPA commisioners John Coupar recused himself from the vote due to a "potential conflict of interest" and Melissa DeGenova is on vacation.

“I am hoping the Vancouver Park Board and the aquarium and this arms-length body can work together to make sure these cetaceans ... have the best life possible and that we also start looking at our environment out there,” said Barnes.

Jasper said that while the aquarium had been transparent and appeared to have been adhering to high standards of care in its facilities, the recent debate illustrated the need for more transparency.

The aquarium does not currently have a breeding program and it's not clear how a ban would be enforced. Thursday’s vote means that the aquarium will only be permitted to breed captive cetaceans in order to benefit threatened species “and the oversight committee, the board, and the society agree that captive breeding is necessary for the survival of such threatened species.”

While the motion did not specify how that standard will be met, two Canadian populations of belugas are currently deemed “threatened” under the Species at Risk Act, while another two are considered “endangered,” meaning they are of even greater concern.

The animal welfare committee that the park board recommended Thursday would be tasked with providing a biannual report to the park board on the status of the aquarium and all cetaceans in its care.

Jasper said the board would also look at the Vancouver Aquarium’s partnerships with other facilities across North America, including SeaWorld and the Georgia Aquarium, to encourage them to adhere to the same standards and changes being introduced in Vancouver.

Former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen said the park board’s decision signalled to him that Vision Vancouver commissioners had realized they’d made a mistake in pushing to ban cetaceans in captivity, an idea he called “not well thought out, ill-conceived and a huge mistake.”

“It sounds to me like they’re trying to back-pedal because they realized they were on very thin ice,” he said.

Tourism Vancouver spokesman Walt Judas said that he was unhappy with the board’s recommendations.

“I think it’s disappointing from the perspective that it still puts the aquarium’s future in jeopardy,” he said.

Vancouver Board of Trade vice president David Crawford was also disappointed by the vote.

“The decision seems to have been made in absence of a fulsome conversation about the impacts,” he said.

“I think the challenge that we’re now faced with is that the implications are unknown, and this is where science needs to weigh in.”

The latest development came after an earlier, two-day hearing where members of the public spoke both for and against the aquarium’s current practices.

More than 100 people had initially signed up to address the park board at a special, daylong meeting last Saturday, which then reconvened Monday.

A report, commissioned by the park board and authored by Dr. Joseph Gaydos, was presented last Saturday and said the quality of the aquarium’s research and stranding-response programs could be compromised if the captivity program ends.

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